A new report has found that radio continues to be a popular choice for Irish news consumers.
This year’s Digital News Report Ireland 2022 shows 31% of these people get their first news of the day from the radio.
This compares to 17% in the UK and an EU average of 19%.
The smartphone is slightly more popular in Ireland, with 35% of respondents citing it as their go-to for accessing news.
Television follows next, with 15% citing the service as their first news source of the day.
Research for the Digital News Report is undertaken by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and is the largest ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world.
The Irish data forms part of the larger survey, conducted in 46 countries.
Ireland’s participation has been facilitated for the past eight years through sponsorship by the BAI, with analysis of the Irish data by researchers from the Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo) at Dublin City University.
Some 57% of Irish respondents said they were extremely or very interested in news.
Researchers believe the distinct fall from last year, when 70% of Irish respondents stated there were extremely or very interested in news, may be accounted for by a ‘Covid slump’, with people weary of the pandemic’s dominance of the news agenda.
Despite this, interest in news among Irish respondents was higher than the UK (43%), Europe (49%), and North America (47%).
Commenting, Chief Executive of the BAI, Celene Craig, said it’s wonderful to see that Ireland still leads the 46 countries involved in this year’s report in the number of people turning to radio as their first source of news in the morning.
